Thieves in St. Louis, Missouri turned a car into a burglary tool when they smashed a stolen car through the front wall of a cell phone store and began stealing cell phones from smashed display cases.

Unfortunately for the thieves, the store manager was armed.

The following is a press release from St. Louis police:

An employee arrived to start work and saw two men in a Mitsubishi Diamante drive into the front glass door of the store. The men then entered the store carrying bags, followed by a third man who had exited a Jeep Cherokee. Once inside the store, the men began to smash out the glass on the counters where cell phones were stored. The employee retrieved a firearm and began shooting at the burglars, hitting one. The trio dropped the bags and ran from the store. The cell phones were all recovered.

At 9:52 a.m. officers were called to the 5300 block of Claxton Avenue for a shooting victim. Police learned that the victim was the suspect in the robbery. The man, 26, was suffering from a gunshot wound to his shoulder. He was taken into custody then transported to a local hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. The other two suspects are at large. Police said that both vehicles used in the robbery had been stolen.

This incident is the one of the most common types of defensive gun uses. That is, one in which no one was killed. Despite this being one of the most common types of defensive gun uses, these incidents are often not included in statistics about defensive gun uses. Many of these statistics and studies focus solely on justifiable homicides, which represent only a fraction of total defensive gun uses.